Wyndham City Council, in partnership with Deakin University, is delighted to announce artist Mita Chowdhury as the recipient of the 2026 Venice Biennale Mentorship and will travel to Venice to participate in the Venetian Kind program from 19–24 October 2026.
Supported by Wyndham City Arts & Culture, the mentorship provides a unique opportunity for a Wyndham-based artist with an immersive international professional development experience to practice on the international stage through participation in Venetian Bind, hosted by the European Cultural Centre and curated by Cameron Bishop and David Cross.
Across six days, she will engage in real-time to develop site-responsive artworks, integrating diverse techniques and perspectives with her existing practice and approach to challenge and expand her creative practice. Working alongside artists, designers, filmmakers, writers and researchers from across Deakin University, Mita will participate in workshops, creative exchange, feedback and critique sessions.
Wyndham City Mayor Cr Mia Shaw said: “2026 The Venice Biennale Mentorship is designed to foster the creative skills of a local practitioner while building the creative capacity of the broader Wyndham community.”
“Wyndham City is proud to support Mita a Wyndham-based artist, as she takes this next step in her artistic journey with international practitioners, curators and researchers. The program supports cross-cultural exchange and creates opportunities for a local artist to engage with new ideas, approaches and professional networks.”
“We look forward to following Mita’s journey from Wyndham to Venice and seeing how this experience shapes the next chapter of her artistic practice.” said Cr Shaw
Mita is an interdisciplinary artist, born in Bangladesh, she draws on personal and family histories to explore memory, migration, place and belonging. Working across digital image-making, expanded painting, installation, textiles and socially engaged art, Mita investigates how photographs, materials, oral histories and everyday cultural practices carry knowledge, history and tradition across generations.
Through archival fragments, post memory and processes of reconstruction, she explores the unstable relationship between remembered histories and lived experience. Her research centres on first-generation Bangladeshi Australian women, examining how identity is negotiated through memory, material culture and creative practice.
Mita has exhibited widely in Australia and Bangladesh, including at the 19th Asian Art Biennale, Dhaka (2022). She has presented seven solo exhibitions since 2021, most recently Inheritance at RMIT First Site Gallery in 2026. Her awards include the RMIT Cultural Vision Scholarship (2022) and the ADFAS Yarra Young and Emerging Artist Award (2023).
The collaborative works developed through the Venetian Kind project will be presented at Palazzo Mora, Venice, in November 2026. Following the Venice exhibition, Deakin University will return the works to Melbourne, where curators will work towards further exhibition opportunities, including potential presentations.
For more information visit the The Venice Biennale Mentorship.